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Ocampo seeks arrest warrant for the Sudan Defence Minister

The ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo has requested the ICC for an arrest warrant against the Sudanese Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein. The charges leveled against him are the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur during August 2003 and March 2004 conflict. Luis-Moreno Ocampo has been in the news a few days back for initiating trial proceedings against the former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo.

Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein is a close ally of the Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir who has been earlier indicted by the Hague-based ICC on the charges of orchestrating the genocide at Darfur. Bashir had absconded and has been able to travel widely without being arrested, to nearby Middle Eastern and African allies and as far afield as China. The case of Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein will be the fourth one that the court will be hearing in connection with the war crimes committed at Darfur. Among the several officers the Human Rights Watch had requested the Hague-based Court to issue warrant; the Defence Minister is one of them.

A Senior Sudanese Official has dismissed the warrant as “ridiculous”. The UN has welcomed this move by the prosecutor. According to UN estimates over 2.7 million people have escaped from their homes since the commencement of the conflict at Darfur in 2003 and around 300,000 have died; although some of them died due to ailments.